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Friends and colleagues of the Beatles—whose first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” was February 9, 1964--reminisced at the 92nd Street Y in New York this past week about the early days of the Fab Four.

Freda Kelly, who was the Beatles’ secretary, ran their fan club and is the subject of a recent documentary, Good ‘Ol Freda, recalled that she first heard them perform at lunch-time concerts at the Cavern, a club in Liverpool. Billy J. Kramer, a musician who was managed, like the Beatles, by Brian Epstein, said the group’s early performances were of “recycled American music…songs that weren’t being played by everybody.” He also said the title of the Beatles’ early song, “Do You Want to Know A Secret?” was inspired by the Profumo affair, a political scandal involving a member of the administration of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

Billy J. Kramer, Freda Kelly, Martin Lewis, Vince Calandra and Peter Asher discuss the Beatles at the 92nd Street Y in New York (Photo courtesy of the 92nd Street Y)

Peter Asher, half of the British duo Peter and Gordon and brother of actress Jane Asher, who dated Paul McCartney for five years and was engaged to him, said McCartney lived during this period in the guest room of the Asher family home in London. McCartney composed in a small music room in the basement—also used by Asher’s mother, a classical musician and teacher—on Asher’s mother’s upright piano.

John Lennon “came over one day and they were down there for a couple of hours, with no guitars. Paul stuck his head up the stairs and called up to my bedroom and asked if I wanted to come down to hear the song they just finished. So I came down and they played ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ for the first time and asked me what I thought of it,” Asher recalled.

Asher also said the Beatles hired George Martin as their producer because they were impressed he had produced records of comedian Peter Sellers.

Vince Calandra, talent coordinator for “The Ed Sullivan Show” when the Beatles appeared on it, said they were the only musical group that ever performed on the show “that wanted to go into the control room to hear the playback. They were so professional, had such a great attitude about things. Polite, but they knew what they wanted to do.”

Calandra stood in for George Harrison, who was ill, at the Beatles’ dress rehearsal for the Sullivan show on February 8, 1964. “I stood there for eight and a half minutes with the guitar, as a statue, and they sang and played their instruments,” he said.

Calandra described the Beatles’ concert at Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965—whose producer he assisted--as an “out of body experience, pandemonium, 65,000 people.” Part of his job was to coordinate the group’s departure from the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan; they took a helicopter to get to Shea Stadium, in Queens, and had an aerial tour of Manhattan en route. Once there they were picked up by a truck, and wore Nehru jackets with Wells Fargo badges. Their requests that night, he said, were for four army cots, clean towels and a container of ; Ringo Starr also asked for a black and white television. McCartney wrote the concert’s songlist on a Mets scorecard, which later disappeared.

“The excitement, you had no idea. The girls were passing out, climbing up the backstop of Shea Stadium,” Calandra said.

Asher described the Beatles as “extremely ambitious, extremely intelligent, extremely acquisitive culturally. Paul in particular was very eclectic with an experimental edge. There was a degree of cultural curiosity which led them to push the boundaries of pop music. They were full of ideas, and, more importantly, gained the power to do it.”